SteelSeries Diablo 3 Mouse Review

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, chances are you know who Blizzard are, or you are at least familiar with some of their games. With Diablo being one of their most popular franchises and Diablo 3 being arguably one of the most anticipated releases yet, Blizzard have teamed up with Steel Series to make sure you have the best tools at your side before you go leaping off into the depths of hell. Cue the first and only officially licensed Diablo 3 Mouse.

Often, when PC peripherals are attached to a franchise, they are little more than a gimmick, an overly expensive piece of advertising for said game. However, I have tested this mouse extensively and I can assure you, that it is genuinely an amazing piece of kit that will leave both yourself and your friends in awe of its performance.

The Package

The mouse comes in a beautifully decorated and incredibly sturdy cardboard box, with a front flap that opens outward to allow you to see your shiny new toy. It is also worth mentioning that the flap has a Diablo 3 art style themed summary, written in 4 languages: English, French, Spanish and German, with a pretty cool piece of Tyrael concept art next to it. The mouse itself is packaged in a transparent piece of plastic, with the cable neatly folded in the top of the box.

In the box, you’ll get the mouse itself, a short quick-start guide, a SteelSeries product overview (also advertising other Blizzard peripherals) and a little Steel Series sticker. There isn’t a CD with drivers or anything, so you’ll have to download the latest drivers and firmware from here: SteelSeries Download

Appearance

The Diablo 3 Mouse’s design is similar to the SteelSeries Xai family of mice. It has the same ambidextrous shape that other mice in SteelSeries range stereotypically include, and it also uses the SteelSeries engine to run its software, but that is about as similar as the Diablo 3 mouse gets to others in the range.

The mouse sticks closely to the Diablo 3 colour scheme, therefore it only has one LED colour, blood red – although with the pulsating feature it changes between red, orange and white to nothing and back again. The only thing that you can change about the LED, is how it illuminates, you can make it pulse, blink or be constantly on or off.

The mouse includes four additional buttons over the standard left and right clicks, two on either side, effectively giving you two thumb buttons and two pinkie buttons – no matter which hand you are using it in. Personally, I found the placement of the thumb buttons to be perfect, I could easily reach both and pressing either one of them didn’t effect the use of the normal buttons, however, the pinkie buttons take some getting used to. From the factory, all the extra buttons are pre-programmed to correspond to your main buttons that you use in Diablo 3.

I have to mention the shell of the mouse. It’s incredibly comfy and instead of the usual feeling of hard plastic, the mouse is coated in a soft, comfortable rubber – no doubt to aid your hand with some relief from the hours and hours of Diablo playing you’re likely to do. The top and sides of the mouse are also surrounded by some tribal/gothic-esque paintings which really tie in well with the Diablo art style.

Finally, we have the scroll wheel and the braided wire. Unlike many mice, the Diablo 3 Mouse ditches the typically smooth or grooved scroll wheel in favour of an angular pattern, which are far higher than the mouse, giving you plenty of grip and comfort when using the wheel. The cable also adds its own unique flair to the mouse with added woven red threads creating a sort of spiral look, the two tone black and red look is also a nice touch as it is identical to the pattern on the Diablo 3 headset that SteelSeries also make. Yey for colour co-ordinated peripherals!

Software

Being a SteelSeries mouse, the Diablo 3 Mouse of course runs on the SteelSeries engine to aid you with all your customization needs,

Those of you who are used to seeing the standard software for the SteelSeries engine are in for a treat, as SteelSeries have completely re-skinned their software to match the Diablo 3 theme! It’s pretty neat and really adds to the feeling that the mouse is a Diablo 3 Mouse, not a regular SteelSeries mouse with nice bits painted on it.

Before using this mouse, I’d never used the SteelSeries software before, and usually this would pose a rather large problem, ending up in me spending hours on end trying to figure out what button to press and where to do what. However, I can say that this is not the case with this mouse! The customization options are incredibly easy to use; I managed to figure out almost instantly. You have the ability to make as many profiles as you like, and, if you have any other SteelSeries gear, you can control all of it from here! Yes, any combination of hardware, all controllable from one place, Nice and simple.

SteelSeries have also added a really fun feature to the engine, under the statistics tab, there is a nice chart that tells you how many clicks and button presses you make, which allows you to find your “hot buttons” (the ones you use most) and assign your most used actions to your most used buttons. Pretty nifty eh?!

You can create an unlimited amount profile Applications, what are Profile Applications you might ask? well consider this you play Darksiders 2 for example or Guild Wars 2 and you have a number of keyboard keys that you would love to have faster access to. With Profile Applications you can browse your system for the .exe, assign the mouse buttons to the keyboard buttons that you use a lot, save the profile, then when you launch the game the SteelSeries Engine will auto set your mouse and headset up for that game.

Performance

When it came to actually using the mouse, it performed fantastically! I couldn’t fault it. The combination of the perfect weight and perfect comfort allowed me to use the mouse completely effortlessly. The 5700 cable laser sensor has some amazing accuracy and when testing the mouse on various game genres, I had absolutely no issues. Playing an FPS was no problem at all, the movement was slick and thanks to the lightweight feel of the mouse, I wasn’t hindered in any way, I also found the extra buttons extremely useful in the button-mashing fighters I played.

Being a Diablo 3 Mouse, it is only appropriate that I test the mouse on Diablo 3. The pre-programmed controls worked wonderfully, I moved my favourite spells and weapons to the extra buttons and off I went! Diving headfirst into a mob was no longer the painless effort that it was before, all for the sake of a few extra buttons!

Specs

Now for the technical stuff. The Diablo 3 Mouse has a double-braided nylon cord (2.5m long) that has a very solid feel to it and protects the internal wiring well. Poor quality cords often impact the performance of the mouse, but with this cord, you will have absolutely no problems.

The mouse also features an Avago laser sensor with up to 5700 CPI (counts per inch), by default, the mouse is set to work at 3200 CPI, making it incredibly sensitive – which I noticed instantly after using my old £3 cheapy mice from Tesco.
Lastly, as mentioned before, the Diablo 3 Mouse has some seriously cool illumination features. It has 3 zones that light up: The CPI switch, the scroll wheel and the Diablo 3 Logo – all of which can be toggled on or off.

7 Programmable buttons

12,000 Frames Per Second

30G Acceleration

True 16 bit sensor data path

USB for MAC or PC

10 million clicks per switch

Ambidextrous design

100 – 5700 Counts Per Inch

Gold plated USB connection

The Verdict

I was really impressed by this mouse, I cannot find a single fault with it. I found both the mouse and the software associated with it refreshingly simple with fantastic customization options. It’s just an all-round and well-built device. If you are looking for a solid mouse, whether it is for gaming or web browsing, you cannot go wrong with the SteelSeries Diablo 3 Mouse.